Phil Risher ran marketing at a $3 million home services business and helped grow it to $5 million before it was sold to a private equity firm. Now he runs Phlash Consulting, where he advises lawn care and home service businesses on what's actually working in marketing.
He sat down with Paul Jamison on the Green Industry Podcast to talk call tracking, AI search, and why most lawn care owners are leaving money on the table.
Most business owners are flying blind on their ads
Marketing agencies would get on calls with Phil and say, "Ads are looking good — looks like we got 10 conversions." When he'd ask which ads drove those leads, they had no idea. At an average cost per lead of $66.02 for home services search ads, that's real money going out the door with no way to trace where it landed.
His solution was giving each marketing channel its own dedicated phone number using CallRail. When a lead calls, the team knows exactly where it came from. Every call gets logged by source, and at the end of the month, the business knows what they spent and what they made from each channel.
Phil calls CallRail the easiest out-of-the-box solution for this, especially for businesses without an agency managing it. A separate number for Google, another for Facebook, another for yard signs, and you stop guessing which channels are booking jobs.
Try it: Use CallRail to pull your call data by source this month. Find the channel driving the most calls and ask whether you're spending proportionally on it — and find the one driving the fewest and ask why.
A lot of business owners, probably 8 out of 10 I talk to, they spend money, pray to the Google gods for leads, but they don't know if they're actually making any money from it.
– Phil Risher, founder, Phlash Consulting
Your call transcripts are a marketing tool you're not using
Most lawn care owners open ChatGPT and ask it to write a blog post about the best time to aerate or when to turn sprinklers on. Phil's argument is that this is backward. Real customers are calling your business every day with real questions, and those conversations are your best source of content — far more valuable than anything generated from a generic prompt.
Building content from transcripts trains AI search tools like ChatGPT and Gemini on your specific business, making you more visible as search shifts away from keywords. Short-form social content is also now indexed on Google, so transcript-based content pulls double duty across your website and social channels at the same time.
Try it: Pull one call transcript from this week. Take the customer's question to ChatGPT and ask it to turn that specific conversation into a blog post or social caption. That's the starting point Phil recommends — not a generic prompt.
The guys that have been doing this for 50 years that have thousands of Google reviews — if they're not forward-thinking and not creating content, then you have the upper hand and you can go capture that market.
– Phil Risher, founder, Phlash Consulting
AI search is changing how people find lawn care businesses
Pointing to BrightLocal research, Phil says about 80% of people still start their home service search on Google — but that number is changing. Only about 46% of Gen Z uses Google to find local service businesses, and they're the ones buying homes next.
He recommends building a pricing page that explains what makes jobs more or less expensive, and setting up online booking. AI agents are already pulling pricing information to surface business recommendations, and businesses with clear, accessible information are the ones getting found.
Try it: Add a pricing page for your bigger-ticket services — sod, hardscaping, irrigation installs. Explain what makes a job more or less expensive. If you don't have online booking yet, that's the next thing to set up.
Start with what your calls already know
None of what Phil describes works without call tracking in place. CallRail gives lawn care businesses a dedicated number for every marketing channel, records and transcribes every call, and integrates directly with your field management platform.* You can see which ads are bringing in calls and hear what's being said on them, all in one place, without needing an agency to make sense of it.
If you're spending money on ads and can't tell which ones are booking jobs, that's the first thing to fix.
Try CallRail free for 14 days — no credit card required.
*Call recording consent requirements vary by jurisdiction.
